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Show 372 HISTORY OF PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT Acreage of Railroad Acquisitions by Grant or Purchase" Kansas Nebraska Union Pacific_______________4,848,108 Burlington_________________2,374,090 Sioux City & Pacific_________ 38,227 Central Branch, Union Pacific . . 2,560 Kansas Pacific____________________________ 3,925,791 Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe_______________ 2,944,788 Missouri River, Fort Scott & Gulf____________ 21,341b Leavenworth, Lawrence & Galveston_________ 62,510 St. Joseph & Denver City______......______ 463,409° Central Branch, Union Pacific_______________ 223,141 Missouri, Kansas & Texas__________________ 705,623 Internal Improvement Lands to Railroads-------- 407,771-----------------------------------------------531,107 Purchases of Indian lands___________________ 1,420,775 Totals__________________.......______10,175,149_____________________________7,792,088 a Addison E. Sheldon, Land Systems and Land Policy in Nebraska, p. 87; Gates, Fifty Million Acres, pp. 209, 251. John McManus, director of the Kansas Pacific, was successful bidder on 142,929 acres of the Sac and Fox Reservation which may have been intended partly to benefit the Kansas Pacific. b The Fort Scott Railroad grant was later forfeited, with the consent of the officials of the road. c A small portion of the St. Joseph & Denver City grant was in Nebraska. at $1 an acre. Like the sale of the Osage Reserve to the L.L. & G., the treaty for the transfer of the Neutral Tract on which 2,000 settlers already had been established produced a storm of opposition throughout Kansas and led to bitter warfare on the reserve-there were raids on the railroad offices, destruction of all the equipment of surveying parties, public whipping of the officers, driving off of construction crews, burning of piles of ties, and the gutting of the office of a newspaper subsidized by the railroad. Two men who bought land from the railroad were murdered, a sheriff was arrested and convicted of insanity for aiding the railroad, and defenders of the railroad were stoned and burned in effigy. Pitched battles between pro- and anti-railroad groups were common. Only after four companies of militia were called out to restore order did peace prevail on the tract. The sale was finally upheld by the Supreme Court.88 The long drawn out fight with settlers delayed construction and enabled the Katy Railroad to be the first to reach the border of Indian Territory, to gain the prized right to build through it, and the valuable land grant Congress had promised. Instead of the 1,382,000-acre land grant it was entitled to expect for its mileage in Kansas, the Fort Scott Company only received 21,341 acres. It was built through the eastern tier of counties where settlement was well advanced and where only scattered portions of land remained in public hands. Worse still, on practically every piece of land it acquired there were squatters claiming the right of preemption. If the company was to defend its rights to the land, it would incur heavy legal expenses and an additional burden of hatred and political animosity. For this meager grant of dubious value, the railroad was subject to the limitations of low rates on government traffic. The land grant, seemingly most promising and once much desired, had become a liability. The railroad became eager to forfeit it. This was accomplished in 1877, 13 years after the grant was made.89 Few states were treated as generously as Kansas, though this occurred only after the unrepresentative pro-slavery-Lecompton element had been displaced in power by a new combination of Free-State, Republican leaders both in Kansas and at Washington. 88 Gates, Fifty Million Acres, pp. 153-93. 89 Ibid., p. 292. |